I see you have plenty of suggestions on the various message boards considering which Vance stories to include, so I’d like to make another suggestion. You mention there will be introductions to the stories…but from who? Is it possible/feasible to get introductions and/or afterwards from the writers and editors in the field? Silverberg did this a few years back with the Avram Davidson Treasury and I, for one, loved it. Gene Wolfe, Ursula LeGuin, Lucius Shepard, Robert Silverberg, Gardner Dozois, Nick Gevers, yourself and Terry, John C Wright, Matt Hughes, Sean McMullen—-who else has been influenced by Vance….

I should add that Terry and I have two complementary roles, as editors. Terry is the hard core Vancephile: loves everything, has read it 20 times, is lifelong friends with Jack, all of that stuff. I, on the other hand, am the skeptic. My role is to essentially sit there and say, “Yeah? Convince me!” I’m supposed to provide balance, provide perspective on well-loved stories etc, to make sure that the final book is one that today’s readers will respond to. I say that because, as delighted as I am with the Subterranean Press edition of this book, it’s my hope we’ll go much further than that. I hope we’ll get a trade edition, a Book Club edition, and sell overseas as well. I’ll be doing everything I can to make sure that this book is still in print in ten or fifteen years, rather than simply appearing and disappearing.

I should probably add that while I have enormous respect for much of the work done by the VIE, I’m not dealing directly with anyone associated the VIE right now. I assume, for what it’s worth, that having published the books and delivered all of the electronic texts to the Vances, the VIE no longer exists.

I do appreciate your comments, though. If you have a copy of the story that you think I should look at, by all means email it on. It’d be aprpeciated.

I was the VIE textual integrity worker for this story: email me if you want to explore further offline.

~Tim